A decision does not have to solve everything
Sometimes it is just the next sensible step
I've noticed that the word 'decision' often carries more weight than it needs to.
For many leaders, it brings to mind something final, polished and hard to reverse. A decision can feel like the moment when all the thinking has to be complete, all the risks have to be understood and the answer has to be strong enough to hold up under pressure.
That is understandable - some decisions really do carry that kind of weight. But not all of them do.
The danger of expecting too much from one decision
In complex situations, I often find that leaders delay decisions because they are imagining them in their biggest possible form. They are treating the next move as though it needs to solve the whole problem, rather than simply move things forward in a sensible way.
I was in conversation recently with a leader who was feeling stuck on an important issue because none of the options felt fully right. The conversation had become heavy with all the things the decision needed to achieve, protect and avoid.
From final answers to the next sensible step
As we slowed things down, it became clear that the task in front of them was smaller than they had made it. They didn't need to land the perfect long-term answer in that moment. They needed to choose the next step that made the most sense from where they were, knowing that it would give them more information, more clarity and a better basis for the decision after that.
That shift changed the feel of the whole conversation. The pressure lifted, not because the challenge disappeared, but because the decision was no longer being asked to do more than it could reasonably do.
I see this quite often. Leaders aren't normally stuck because they lack judgement. Sometimes they are stuck because they can see so much - the risks, the consequences, the competing pressures and the implications for different people - that they start expecting one decision to do too much.
This matters at board level too. CEOs often need to help boards see that in complex situations, a good decision is not always a final answer, but sometimes the next sensible move that creates more clarity.
So if there is something you have been hesitating over recently, it may be worth asking:
Am I trying to make this decision final and complete, when what I really need is the next step that makes sense?
I work one-to-one with senior leaders, helping them build strategies to tackle complex challenges. If you'd like to explore what that could look like for you, you can find out more here.
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